Teaching International Law Across an Urban Divide: Reflections on an Improvisation

Abstract

This article recounts an experiment whereby which two teachers of international law and human rights, working on opposite sides of a large, industrialized metropolis (Sydney), brought their students together to stage an exercise in experiential learning. This exercise took the form of a student conference during which law students drawn from two very different demographic landscapes presented their research and participated collaboratively in negotiation role-plays. In this article, the authors reflect upon the successes and failings of this event, evaluating it by reference to contemporary pedagogical literature. The authors contend that collaborative teaching exercises of this kind might offer important ways of encouraging law students to move beyond the rote reproduction of a legal language nominally attentive to difference, through learning to traverse disparate parts and peoples of their own city.

Keywords: international law teaching, experiential learning, pedagogy, collaboration, equity

JEL Classification: I20, I21, K10, K30